ce at
compounding the medicine. We were both intent on the bottle; he filling
it, and I holding the light--when we heard the surgery door suddenly
opened from the street.

VIII

Who could possibly be up and about in our quiet village at the second hour
of the morning?

The person who opened the door appeared within range of the light of the
candle. To complete our amazement, the person proved to be a woman! She
walked up to the counter, and standing side by side with me, lifted her
veil. At the moment when she showed her face, I heard the church clock
strike two. She was a stranger to me, and a stranger to the doctor. She
was also, beyond all comparison, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen
in my life.

"I saw the light under the door," she said. "I want some medicine."

She spoke quite composedly, as if there was nothing at all extraordinary
in her being out in the village at two in the morning, and following me
into the surgery to ask for medicine! The doctor stared at her as if he
suspected his own eyes of deceiving him. "Who are you?" he asked. "How do
you come to be wandering about at this time in the morning?"

She paid no heed to his questions. She only told him coolly what she
wanted. "I have got a bad toothache. I want a bottle of laudanum."

The doctor recovered himself when she asked for the laudanum. He was on
his own ground, you know, when it came to a matter of laudanum; and he
spoke to her smartly enough this time.

"Oh, you have got the toothache, have you? Let me look at the tooth."

She shook her head, and laid a two-shilling piece on the counter. "I won't
trouble you to look at the tooth," she said. "There is the money. Let me
have the laudanum, if you please."

The doctor put the two-shilling piece back again in her hand. "I don't
sell laudanum to strangers," he answered. "If you are in any distress of
body or mind, that is another matter. I shall be glad to help you."

She put the money back in her pocket. "_You_ can't help me," she said, as
quietly as ever. "Good morning."

With that, she opened the surgery door to go out again into the street. So
far, I had not spoken a word on my side. I had stood with the candle in my
hand (not knowing I was holding it)--with my eyes fixed on her, with my
mind fixed on her like a man bewitched. Her looks betrayed, even more
plainly than her words, her resolution, in one way or another, to destroy
herself. When she opened the door, in my alar